This invention is directed to techniques to distribute software and prevent its unauthorized transfer.
It is desirable to distribute software electronically and still license it in some manner. Traditionally there were two ways of doing this licensing. One was shipping a CD with a software that required a license key. All CD's for a given product would have the same software, except for the license key that was required. This is a common way of distributing software for desktop applications. A second mechanism has a licensing software library built into the software. Both mechanisms are often used to down load software from the Internet.
One approach is a product Flex1M offered by Globetrotter. With this product a distributor buys the software, bundles the software with application software, and uses the bundled mechanism for generating keys.